Goats, goats and more goats

I have dabbled with cheese making and it is an enjoyable hobby not to mention a delicious one. I started off with the 30 minute mozzarella kit from www.cheesemaking.com. It was easy and I had really good results. The only problem I ever had was with the curds not getting hot enough and therefore not stretching properly. Of course, the fact that we ate it immediately showed that the curd stretching was not really a problem. How can I describe fresh mozzarella? It is creamy and delicious. When it is fresh from the making, it is also a 3/4lb. ball of melted cheese. Who could resist that??? Mozzarella is wonderful, but I wanted to branch out. So far, I have made ricotta, crème fraise, and chevre. I love the chevre because I can control the texture. I want to be able to easily spread my chevre on a cracker...not too worried about shaping it, so I drain for about 6 hours vs. 12 hours. It is very satisfying. Chevre is made from goat milk and that meant a drive to Short Pump and to Whole Foods. No problem, but I began to wonder if there might be a better way especially since I was beginning to eye the brine rinsed cheeses and the pressed, hard cheeses. The solution was to establish our own herd of dairy goats. Seems pretty extreme, but that is exactly what we have done. We built a small barn with a milking shed and are the proud owners of 7 goats. Biggest surprise? Goats have personalities and I often know which one is coming around the corner by their voice. Maggie, Molly, and Max were our first. Maggie is the mother and Molly and Max are her first babies. Molly and Max are twins. Molly is black. Max is white. Molly talks all the time. Max is into everything. We put two lawn chairs in their pen so we had a place to sit and Max and Molly took them over. They climbed on them, fought over them, and when Jerry and I were able to sit down, they took turns jumping into our laps. Tara, Scarlett and Savannah were our next set. Tara is four years old and Scarlett and Savannah are her twins. As a bonus, crybaby Rhett also came home with us. These four goats are all registered Nubians. Poor Max...he isn't allowed to breed with anyone and so you know what that meant. =( Tara and her girls are red. Rhett is black with spots. He is going to help our girls make really cute babies. Next year we should have 10 babies and 5 does in milk. It will be a busier place for sure. I am excited about that because right now, it is taking about 4 days of milking to get to a gallon of milk. As the babies are weaned completely, that should go up, but until then, it is a long time between cheeses. Tara has experience as a dairy goat. I do not have experience as a goat milker. There are sometimes some problems. I give both goats alfalfa cubes to keep them busy while I milk. Jerry built a milking stand for me and it is a glorified raised platform with a headlock. There is a place to put the feed bucket. Today, Tara tried to shift away from me and she tipped the milking stand enough for her to slide off. This means that my largest goat has her head in the stand and her hind end is no longer on the stand. I had to lift her back onto the stand. I don't think I ever envisioned myself bear hugging a goat's back side and heaving it up onto a platform. Everyone should try it...it was very gratifying because it meant that milking could resume.